Beginning
1 John 1:1-2:2
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The latest season of the HBO series True Detective, subtitled Night Country, is set against the season of nighttime that falls on the area of Alaska hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle. At the center of the story is local police chief Elizabeth Danvers, played by Jodie Foster. As the story unfolds, Danvers is often heard correcting her fellow detectives as they follow their investigation, “wrong question.” She knows that when it comes to understanding, or even approaching a mystery, the questions we ask can make all the difference in whether we get a useful answer. When it comes to questions of faith, some questions are more helpful than others. Some folks will ask, “did it really happen,” hoping to secure something like verifiable proof. Back in 1962, Karl Barth was one of the most well-regarded Reformed theologians of his time. While on a lecture tour in the United States he was asked a question about the historic factuality of Jesus’ resurrection. Had the modern press been present in Jerusalem that fateful week, he was asked, would they have covered the resurrection as a news story, the way we understand such stories today.” Barth’s reply bore some of the same edge as police chief Danvers. “Did you say you were from Christianity Today, or Christianity Yesterday?” Wrong question.
The answer to such a question can only be speculative at best, and will undoubtedly lead us nowhere. As will, “how did it happen?” We don’t know. We can’t know. Try again. Then we come to a text like the opening of this letter to the early church. One of the most helpful ways to read biblical texts is to consider the question it is trying to answer. Why? Why do we talk about what we have seen and touched and heard? What does the writer say? Do we do it to convince you that you are wrong and we are right? No, they don’t say that. Do we do it so that you won’t burn in hell? Nope, not that either. No, the writer says that they declare what they do about Jesus to draw others into relationship with them. And since they are in relationship with God and Jesus, to draw others into relationship with God and Jesus too. Not to score points, or own someone, or control their behavior, or any of the other overly muscular motivations that tend to dominate our world, but out of joy. To make our joy complete.
Ask another question. Where does all this begin? In Mark’s account of the Jesus story, the good news begins at the river Jordan. It has its beginning with a voice crying out. In the wilderness prepare the way, change direction, start again. But here you get the sense that what there is to declare starts much earlier, what was from the beginning. Not just with a prophet and a river, but the beginning of everything. So where does this all begin, then? Does it begin at the river, or does it begin long before the river, or the water in it, or all the rest was ordered into being? The answer seems to be, “yes.” Yes, there is a word of life that has (as John’s Gospel puts it) been with God from the beginning. But, that word of life has been revealed in such a way as to be seen, looked at and touched, heard. In short, that eternal word of life has been made known to us in Jesus, the carpenter’s son, from Nazareth. Mary’s boy.
Next question. What does any of this have to do with joy? Wha the letter writer wants us to know is the joy that comes from connection, the joy that comes from being together in a community of people who have had their lives changed, who have been given a fresh start, a new beginning that comes from all beginning. Of course, no one goes looking for any of that while they think they’ve got it all figured out. People who don’t think they’re lost, generally don’t tend to ask for directions. In the first church I served, there was a woman who was steadfast in her Sunday attendance. She was married, and her husband was just as steadfast in his absence from Sunday worship. We got to talking one day and she said her granddaughter of all people has put him on the spot one day. “Grandpa,” she asked, “how come you never go to church?” His answer, “don’t you think I’m good enough.” In his mind, to come to church, to associate with the likes of us, would require him to acknowledge that there was something lacking, that he himself was somehow lacking. This was in the heart of the bible belt, and my guess is that he’d had his fill of being told he was a miserable sinner. I get it. No one likes that.
It's crazy though, isn’t it? How often we exchange the joy we’re offered in Christ for a misery of our own making. But the solution isn’t to abandon the one because of the other. Sin is real. That’s a real thing. Not just the vices we’ve been told make us sinners. But the condition of our hearts that would have us gravitate toward the darkness because it’s easier to hide there. It’s easier to conceal the uncharitable judgements that we hold, the bitter envy we feel, or the destructive rage and secret desires that threaten to undo us. Not all of it is salacious, or scandalous. Some of it is just a reaction to fear and pain and unmet longing. But all of it is real in one way or another. That’s what makes us miserable. That’s what, as the Psalmist puts it, weighs so heavily upon us. If we can’t be honest about that, if we can’t acknowledge that reality, then our whole lives become something of a lie; pretending we’re alive while we walk around feeling dead inside.
The joy is found in knowing that while our sin may be real, it needn’t make us miserable. While our sin is real it does not and will not define us if we walk with one another in the light of God’s forgiving love made real, made flesh in Jesus. Our joy is made complete when we ask how are we to live in the light of his resurrection with one another not yesterday, but today. Lifting up one another knowing that we are all in need of forgiveness. Because to suggest otherwise is to fall into darkness. This isn’t an abstraction, that is the very word of life that dwells in us, that we can see and touch and hear and know in the community we find with each other as we trust in that word to raise us up, to begin again, and again, and again, and again.